No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. $24.95 — 309 pp.

She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I don’t like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I don’t think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I don’t have much doubt that she will be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.

The passage quoted above (minus most of the commas) could have been taken out of the mouth of the protagonist in Jim Thompson’s noir thriller, The Killer Inside Me. The bleak view of mankind’s future and the author’s indifference to conventional grammar (no quotation marks, an abundance of sentence fragments, minimal punctuation, etc.) also resembles passages in a Faulkner novel.

Instead, it captures the melancholy soul of Sheriff Bell, an elderly Texas law officer in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. In keeping with the sentiments expressed in the title, Bell views the rapid increase of cruelty and greed in the world around him with mounting dread. He yearns for retirement and a haven far from police scanners and crime scenes. Bell no longer believes that the good guys are winning.

Bell also believes that the world has spawned a new breed of evil – soulless men that he calls “prophets of destruction.” With growing frequency, he finds himself dealing with crimes of shocking carnage. However, it is the guileless eyes of the killers that trouble Sheriff Bell the most. When a reporter asks the weary lawman the reason for the alarming increase in crime, Bell tells her that things began to go wrong when everyone stopped saying “sir” and “ma’m.” When courtesy and politeness vanished, says Bell, this country started down the road to hell.

However, Sheriff Bell doesn’t have a major role in this novel. He seems to be a mere bystander — a law officer who makes a belated appearance at the crime scene, picks up a few spent shells and makes occasional observations like the Chorus in a Greek tragedy. At the crux of No Country for Old Men are two men: Llewelyn Moss, a man who accidentally stumbles on the bloody scene of a drug deal gone wrong (and $2.5 million) while he is hunting antelope on the Rio Grande; and Chigurh, a man who is armed with a slaughterhouse gun (normally used to fire a steel bolt into the skulls of steers). When Moss decides to abscond with the drug money, he anticipates pursuit by Mexican drug lords, bounty hunters, Sheriff Bell and an assortment of federal agents. However, he did not reckon on Chigurh.

No Country for Old Men is a masterful blend of suspense, character and dialogue. Starting with Moss’ discovery of the bodies of the drug suppliers/buyers in the desert, the action gradually acquires a riveting headlong pace of a runaway train. The reader’s sympathy is drawn to the hapless Moss whose character is revealed through dialogue. As his flight becomes frenzied, he realizes that he has inadvertently endangered his wife, Carla Jean. Moss’ desperate (and fruitless) attempts to protect his wife only serve to bring him to an inevitable meeting with Chigurh.

Chigurh, like the protagonist in another McCarthy novel, Blood Meridian, is a terrifying creation. Gradually, it becomes apparent that he has no allegiance to drug lords, law officers or bounty hunters. He is a free agent and his pursuit is relentless. Yet, he is something more. At times, he appears to be an unrelenting force – a kind of vengeful fate that acknowledges no other power except whim. He kills without reason. In the final analysis, he remains inscrutable — a dark mystery.

There is another mystery attending No Country for Old Men. Why did Cormac McCarthy – an author that many critics consider “America’s greatest living writer” — decide to write this book? After a seven-year silence, why does he tell us this harrowing tale that resembles a fast-paced thriller about drug dealers and an inhuman killer armed with a bizarre weapon?

The answer may lie with Sheriff Bell, the aging law officer who has survived 40 years of law enforcement. As the body count mounts in this western “noir” tale, Bell senses the coming of a force that will sweep everything away — a kind of vengeful scourge, which he envisions as legions of serial killers — murderers who kill without purpose or motive. Certainly, a recurring theme in the old lawman’s monologues is the belief that America has given birth to its own destruction. For Bell, lawlessness has been loosed on the land.

Finally, the novel’s “drug deal gone wrong” may be a bleak parable of America’s current condition —a land poisoned by greed and violence. Does McCarthy see his country as doomed? That seems to be a bitter epitaph, even for McCarthy. I prefer to think that like Jeremiah, he is proclaiming a warning. He is saying that we are on the brink of apocalypse. We need to turn back.

(Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)